There’s a hot new Hawaii Poll breaking today with the latest numbers on the Hawaii primary race for governor, so why am I searching out data from 1978?

Because that was the last time I saw an incumbent Hawaii governor in as much trouble as David Ige.

The primary election is still 137 days away, but the latest Honolulu Star-Advertiser poll shows U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa leading incumbent Gov. David Ige, 47 to 27 percentage points. Former state Sen. Clayton Hee has 11 percent with the remaining 15 percent undecided.

According to most political reasoning, incumbents win re-election, perhaps not with the regularity of Russian or Chinese major domos; but incumbents are favored, they have money, organization and besides, they have done it before.

Back in 1978, then-Mayor Frank Fasi was running against Gov. George Ariyoshi. According to a poll taken by The Honolulu Advertiser in the closing days of the primary race, incumbent Ariyoshi was losing, 43 percent to Fasi’s 63 percent.

When pollsters asked who was doing the best job, Fasi had 44 percent favorability to Ariyoshi’s 34 percent. Ethnic voting was highlighted in the 1978 primary with Ariyoshi having 55 percent of the AJA vote and Fasi holding 74 percent of the white vote.

In the final primary tally Ariyoshi pulled it out, 54 percent to 44 percent.

Hawaii’s 1978 campaign was a lot flashier than today’s campaigns. Veteran Washington reporter Lou Cannon, writing for The Washington Post, said, “Ariyoshi, the only Japanese-American ever to be governor, is regarded even by some supporters as over-cautious, indecisive and inept. But he now is favored to defeat Fasi, a combative Sicilian-American politician who was severely damaged by a bribery investigation instigated by the Ariyoshi administration.”

Today the campaign between Ige and Hanabusa has two Japanese-American politicians and Clayton Hee, who is part-Hawaiian. There isn’t any public, empirical research to show if Japanese-American voters would split the vote or more likely vote on factors besides ethnicity.

Here’s the problem. Ige, according to the poll, is coming into the race with a disastrously poor approval rating.

Four years ago, in the early going, former Gov. Neil Abercrombie, the first Hawaii Democratic incumbent governor to lose a primary re-election campaign, was actually leading the job approval contest. Abercrombie’s approval rating was never that great, but in February 2014, he was leading Ige, 47 percent to 38 percent. By August, however, Abercrombie was sinking with an approval rating of 38 percent.

The bad news for Ige is those low marks are about where Ige is right now. He has a 39 percent approval rating and 49 percent disapproval.

The ethnic breakdown is equally disappointing for Ige, with a disapproval rating ranging from 38 percent to 46 percent, with 50 percent of Japanese-American voters giving him a thumbs down.

Is there a reason for this? Yes. It largely comes from Ige’s bumbled handling of the false-alarm missile alert. A full 39 percent says it was a major factor in his performance rating with another 36 percent saying it was a minor factor. That’s 75 percent of the voters with a specific thought to hold against Ige. Changing that is like changing reality.

Shifting perceptions of Ige are likely to take more than the Ige campaign can handle, so unless Ige can change the conversation to just attacking Hanabusa, his campaign has few options.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.